¹ English is the de facto language of American government. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language. English is the official language of at least twenty-eight states; English and Hawaiian are official languages in the state of Hawaii.

² Sometimes listed as fourth largest in area; the rank is disputed with China (PRC). The U.S. figure includes only the fifty states and the District of Columbia, not the territories.

³ The population estimate includes people whose usual residence is in the fifty states and the District of Columbia, including noncitizens. It does not include either those living in the territories, amounting to more than four million U.S. citizens (most in Puerto Rico), or U.S. citizens living outside the United States.

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated almost entirely in central North America, where its fourty-eight contiguous states and the capital district of Washington, D.C., lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent with Canada to its east and Russia west across the narrow Bering Strait, and the state of Hawaii is in the central Pacific. The United States also possesses several territories, or insular areas, that are scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 300 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by land area and by population. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.^[6] The U.S. economy is the largest national economy in the world, with a nominal 2006 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than US$13 trillion (over 19% of the world total).^[3]

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. Proclaiming themselves "states," they issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The rebellious states defeated Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence.^[7] A federal convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments, was ratified in 1791.

In the nineteenth century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over the expansion of the institution of slavery and states' rights provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of slavery in the United States. The Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the nation's status as a military power. In 1945, the United States emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The sole remaining superpower in the post–Cold War era, the United States is a dominant economic, political, cultural, and military force in the world.^[8]

Etymology

Common abbreviations of the United States of America include the United States, the U.S., and the U.S.A. Colloquial names for the country include the common America as well as the States. The term Americas, for the lands of the western hemisphere, was coined in the early sixteenth century after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer and cartographer. The full name of the country was first used officially in the Declaration of Independence, which was the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" adopted by the "Representatives of the united States of America" on July 4, 1776.^[9] The current name was finalized on November 15, 1777, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first of which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'" Columbia, a once popular name for the Americas and the United States, was derived from Christopher Columbus. It appears in the name District of Columbia. A female personification of Columbia appears on some official documents, including certain prints of U.S. currency.

The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an American. Though United States is the formal adjective, American and U.S. are the most common adjectives used to refer to the country ("American values," "U.S. forces"). American is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States.

Geography

Main articles: Geography of the United States and Territorial evolution of the United States

Topographic map of the continental United States

Climate zones of the continental United States

The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area, before or after the People's Republic of China, depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted. Including only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.^[10] The continental United States stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and from Canada to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. Alaska is the largest state in area. Separated by Canada, it touches the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the Pacific, southwest of North America. The commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the largest and most populous U.S. territory, is in the northeastern Caribbean. With a few exceptions, such as the territory of Guam and the westernmost portions of Alaska, nearly all of the country lies in the western hemisphere.

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi-Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north-south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie land of the Great Plains stretches to the west. The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the continental United States, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado.^[11] The area to the west of the Rockies is dominated by deserts such as the Mojave and the rocky Great Basin. The Sierra Nevada range runs parallel to the Rockies, relatively close to the Pacific coast. At 20,320 ft (6,194 m) , Alaska's Mount McKinley is the country's tallest peak. Active volcanoes are common throughout the Alexander and Aleutian Islands and the entire state of Hawaii is built upon tropical volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.^[12]

Because of the United States' large size and wide range of geographic features, nearly every type of climate is represented. The climate is temperate in most areas, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska, semiarid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and arid in the Great Basin. Extreme weather is not uncommon—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the continental United States, primarily in the Midwest.^[13]

Environment

Formerly endangered, the bald eagle has been the national bird of the United States since 1782

Main articles: Environmental movement in the United States and United States environmental law

With habitats ranging from tropical to Arctic, U.S. plant life is very diverse. The country has more than 17,000 identified native species of flora, including 5,000 in California (home to the tallest, the most massive, and the oldest trees in the world).^[14] More than 400 mammal, 700 bird, 500 reptile and amphibian, and 90,000 insect species have been documented.^[15] Wetlands such as the Florida Everglades are the base for much of this diversity. The country's ecosystems include thousands of nonnative exotic species that often harm indigenous plant and animal communities. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In 1872, the world's first national park was established at Yellowstone. Another fifty-seven national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks and forests have since been formed.^[16] Wilderness areas have been established around the country to ensure long-term protection of pristine habitats. Altogether, the U.S. government regulates 1,020,779 square miles (2,643,807 km²) , 28.8% of the country's total land area.^[17] Protected parks and forestland constitute most of this. As of March 2004, approximately 16% of public land under Bureau of Land Management administration was being leased for commercial oil and natural gas drilling;^[18] public land is also leased for mining and cattle ranching. The United States is the second largest emitter, after China, of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.^[19] The energy policy of the United States is widely debated; many call on the country to take a leading role in fighting global warming.^[20]

History

Main article: History of the United States

Native Americans and European settlers

Main articles: Native Americans in the United States, European colonization of the Americas, and Thirteen Colonies

The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska, migrated from Asia. They began arriving at least 12,000 and as many as 40,000 years ago.^[21] Several indigenous communities in the pre-Columbian era developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. European explorer Christopher Columbus arrived at Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493, making first contact with the Native Americans. In the years that followed, the majority of the Native American population was killed by epidemics of Eurasian diseases.^[22]

The Mayflower transported Pilgrims to the New World in 1620, as depicted in William Halsall's The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor, 1882

Spaniards established the earliest European colonies on the mainland, in the area they named Florida; of these, only St. Augustine, founded in 1565, remains. Later Spanish settlements in the present-day southwestern United States drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North American interior as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. The first successful British settlements were the Virginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the revolution, the British shipped an estimated 50,000 convicts to its American colonies.^[23] Beginning in 1614, the Dutch established settlements along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. The small settlement of New Sweden, founded along the Delaware River in 1638, was taken over by the Dutch in 1655.

In the French and Indian War, the colonial extension of the Seven Years War, Britain seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. By 1674, the British had won the former Dutch colonies in the Anglo-Dutch Wars; the province of New Netherland was renamed New York. With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had active local and colonial governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self government that stimulated support for republicanism. All had legalized the African slave trade. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonies doubled in population every twenty-five years. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. By 1770, the colonies had an increasingly Anglicized population of three million, approximately half that of Britain itself. Though subject to British taxation, they were given no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.

Independence and expansion

Main articles: American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, and Manifest Destiny

Declaration of Independence, by John Trumbull, 1817–18

Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 through 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights," the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation were adopted, uniting the states under a weak federal government that operated until 1788. Some 70,000–80,000 loyalists to the British Crown fled the rebellious states, many to Nova Scotia and the new British holdings in Canada.^[24] Native Americans, with divided allegiances, fought on both sides of the war's western front.

U.S. growth by date of statehood and ratification of the Constitution

After the British army's defeat by American forces, who were assisted by the French, Great Britain recognized the sovereignty of the thirteen states in 1783. A constitutional convention was organized in 1787 by those who wished to establish a strong national government with power over the states. By June 1788, nine states had ratified the United States Constitution, sufficient to establish the new government; the republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and president, George Washington, took office in 1789. New York City was the federal capital for a year, before the government relocated to Philadelphia. In 1791, the states ratified the Bill of Rights, ten amendments to the Constitution forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections. Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a clause in the Constitution protected the African slave trade only until 1808. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution." In 1800, the federal government moved to the newly founded Washington, D.C. The Second Great Awakening made evangelicalism a force behind various social reform movements.

Territorial acquisitions by date

Americans' eagerness to expand westward began a cycle of Indian Wars that stretched to the end of the nineteenth century, as Native Americans were stripped of their land. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 virtually doubled the nation's size. The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened American nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The country annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845. The concept of Manifest Destiny was popularized during this time.^[25] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest. The California Gold Rush of 1848–1849 further spurred western migration. New railways made relocation much less arduous for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, commonly called buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of the bison, a primary economic resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.

Civil War and industrialization

Main articles: American Civil War, Reconstruction, and Spanish-American War

Battle of Gettysburg, lithograph by Currier & Ives, ca. 1863

Tensions between slave and free states mounted with increasing disagreements over the relationship between the state and federal governments and violent conflicts over the expansion of slavery into new states. Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860. Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession from the United States, forming the Confederate States of America. The federal government maintained secession was illegal, and with the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the American Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy. The Union freed Confederate slaves as its army advanced through the South. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,^[26] made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power.^[27]

Immigrants landing at Ellis Island, New York, 1902

After the war, the assassination of President Lincoln Radical Republican (USA) Reconstruction policies aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves. The disputed 1876 presidential election resolved by the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction; Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans. In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants hastened the country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, which lasted until 1929, provided labor for U.S. businesses and transformed American culture. High tariff protections, national infrastructure building, and new banking regulations encouraged industrial growth. The 1867 Alaska purchase from Russia completed the country's mainland expansion. The Wounded Knee massacre in 1890 was the last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the indigenous monarchy of the Pacific Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a coup led by American residents; the archipelago was annexed by the United States in 1898. Victory in the Spanish-American War that same year demonstrated that the United States was a major world power and resulted in the annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines.^[28] The Philippines gained independence a half-century later; Puerto Rico remains a commonwealth of the United States.

World War I, Great Depression, and World War II

Main articles: The United States in World War I, Great Depression, and Military history of the United States during World War II

An abandoned farm in South Dakota during the Dust Bowl, 1936

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many citizens, mostly Irish and German, opposed intervention.^[29] In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, turning the tide against the Central Powers. Reluctant to be involved in European affairs, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations. The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on isolationism.^[30] In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. In part due to the service of many in the war, Native Americans gained U.S. citizenship in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

During most of the 1920s, the United States enjoyed a period of unbalanced prosperity as farm profits fell while industrial profits grew. A rise in debt and an inflated stock market culminated in the 1929 crash that triggered the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy. The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration. The nation would not fully recover from the economic depression until the industrial mobilization spurred by its entrance into World War II. The United States, effectively neutral during the war's early stages after the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939, began supplying materiel to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program.

On December 7, 1941, the United States joined the Allies against the Axis powers after a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan. World War II cost far more money than any other war in American history,^[31] but it boosted the economy by providing capital investment and jobs, while bringing many women into the labor market. Among the major combatants, the United States was the only nation to become richer—indeed, far richer—instead of poorer due to the war.^[32] Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States and Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As victory was achieved in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.^[33] The United States, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.^[34]

Superpower

Main articles: Cold War, American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), and War on Terrorism

Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech, 1963

The United States and Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The United States promoted liberal democracy and capitalism, while the Soviet Union promoted communism and a centrally planned economy. The Soviet Union supported dictatorships, as did the United States, and both engaged in proxy wars. United States troops fought Communist Chinese forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment.

The Soviet Union launched the first manned spacecraft in 1961, prompting U.S. efforts to raise proficiency in mathematics and science and President John F. Kennedy's call for the country to be first to land "a man on the moon," achieved in 1969.^[35] Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, America experienced sustained economic expansion. A growing civil rights movement headed by prominent African Americans, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., fought segregation and discrimination, leading to the abolition of Jim Crow laws. Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful Vietnam War.

President Ronald Reagan (1981–89) challenges Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, 1987

As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, rather than be impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power; he was succeeded by Gerald Ford. During the Jimmy Carter administration in the late 1970s, the U.S. economy experienced stagflation. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 marked a significant rightward shift in American politics, reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities.^[36] In the late 1980s and 1990s, the Soviet Union's power diminished, leading to its collapse. The leadership role taken by the United States and its allies in the United Nations–sanctioned Gulf War, under President George H. W. Bush, and later the Yugoslav wars helped to preserve its position as the world's last remaining superpower. The longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the administration of President Bill Clinton.^[37] In 1998, Clinton was impeached by the House on charges relating to a civil lawsuit and a sexual scandal, but was acquitted by the Senate and remained in office.

The controversial presidential election of 2000 was resolved by a Supreme Court decision that effectively awarded the presidency to Texas governor George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush. On September 11, 2001, terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly three thousand people. In the aftermath, President Bush launched the War on Terrorism under a military philosophy stressing preemptive war now known as the Bush Doctrine. In late 2001, U.S. forces led a NATO invasion of Afghanistan, removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda terrorist training camps. Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerilla war against the NATO-led force. In 2002, the Bush administration began to press for regime change in Iraq on controversial grounds. Lacking the support of NATO, Bush formed a Coalition of the Willing and the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, removing President Saddam Hussein from power. Although facing both external^[38] and internal^[39] pressure to withdraw, the United States maintains its military presence in Iraq.

Government and politics

Main articles: Federal government of the United States, Elections in the United States, Politics of the United States, and Political ideologies in the United States

The west front of the United States Capitol, which houses the United States Congress

The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law."^[40] It is fundamentally structured as a representative democracy, though U.S. citizens residing in the territories are excluded from voting for federal officials.^[41] The government is regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the United States Constitution, which serves as the country's supreme legal document and as a social contract for the people of the United States. In the American federalist system, citizens are usually subject to three levels of government, federal, state, and local; the local government's duties are commonly split between county and municipal governments. In almost all cases, executive and legislative officials are elected by a plurality vote of citizens by district. There is no proportional representation at the federal level, and it is very rare at lower levels. Federal and state judicial and cabinet officials are typically nominated by the executive branch and approved by the legislature, although some state judges are elected by popular vote. The voting age is eighteen and voter registration is the individual's responsibility; there are no mandatory voting laws.

The north side of the White House, home and work place of the U.S. president

The federal government is composed of three branches:

Legislative: The bicameral Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has the rarely used power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government.
Executive: The president is the commander-in-chief of the military, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the Cabinet and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.
Judiciary: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the president with Senate approval, interpret laws and can overturn laws they deem unconstitutional.

The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the fifty states by population every tenth year. As of the 2000 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, has fifty-three. Each state has two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every second year. The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The president is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned by state. The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.

The front of the United States Supreme Court building.

All laws and procedures of both state and federal governments are subject to review, and any law ruled in violation of the Constitution by the judicial branch is overturned. The original text of the Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government, the relationship between it and the individual states, and essential matters of military and economic authority. Article One protects the right to the "great writ" of habeas corpus, and Article Three guarantees the right to a jury trial in all criminal cases. Amendments to the Constitution require the approval of three-fourths of the states. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of individual rights in the United States.

Politics in the United States have operated under a two-party system for virtually all of the country's history. For elective offices at all levels, state-administered primary elections are held to choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the two dominant parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824 (though its roots trace back to 1792), and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. The current president, George W. Bush, is a Republican; following the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party controls both the House and the Senate. The Senate has two independent members—one is a former Democratic incumbent, the other is a self-described socialist; every member of the House is a Democrat or Republican. An overwhelming majority of state and local officials are also either Democrats or Republicans. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote.

Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered "center-right" or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered "center-left" or liberal, but members of both parties have a wide range of views. In an August 2007 poll, 36% of Americans described themselves as "conservative," 34% as "moderate," and 25% as "liberal."^[42] On the other hand, a plurality of adults, 35.9%, identify as Democrats, 32.9% as independents, and 31.3% as Republicans.^[43] The states of the Northeast, Great Lakes, and West Coast are relatively liberal-leaning—they are known in political parlance as "blue states." The "red states" of the South and the Rocky Mountains lean conservative.

States

Main article: U.S. state

The United States is a federal union of fifty states. The original thirteen states were the successors of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule. Most of the rest have been carved from territory obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. The exceptions are Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii; each was an independent republic before joining the union. Early in the country's history, three states were created out of the territory of existing ones: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the American Civil War. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the states do not have the right to secede from the union.

The states comprise the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the only other areas considered integral parts of the country are the District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The United States possesses five major territories with indigenous populations: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific. Those born in the territories possess U.S. citizenship.

Foreign relations and military

Main articles: Foreign relations of the United States and Military of the United States

President George W. Bush (right) with UK prime minister Gordon Brown.

The United States has vast economic, political, and military influence on a global scale, which makes its foreign policy a subject of great interest around the world. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many host consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions. However, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and Sudan do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States.^[44]

American isolationists have often been at odds with internationalists, as anti-imperialists have been with promoters of Manifest Destiny and American Empire. American imperialism in the Philippines drew sharp rebukes from Mark Twain, philosopher William James, and many others. Later, President Woodrow Wilson played a key role in creating the League of Nations, but the Senate prohibited American membership in it. Isolationism became a thing of the past when the United States took a lead role in founding the United Nations, becoming a permanent member of the Security Council and host to the United Nations Headquarters. The United States enjoys a special relationship with the United Kingdom and strong ties with Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, and fellow NATO members. It also works closely with its neighbors through the Organization of American States and free trade agreements such as the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In 2005, the United States spent $27.3 billion on official development assistance, the most in the world; however, as a share of gross national income (GNI) , the U.S. contribution of 0.22% ranked twentieth of twenty-two donor states. On the other hand, nongovernmental sources such as private foundations, corporations, and educational and religious institutions donated $95.5 billion. The total of $122.8 billion is again the most in the world and seventh in terms of GNI percentage.^[45]

The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier

The president holds the title of commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States Department of Defense administers the armed forces, including the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force. The Coast Guard falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and the Department of the Navy in times of war. In 2005, the military had 1.38 million personnel on active duty,^[46] along with several hundred thousand each in the Reserves and the National Guard for a total of 2.3 million troops. The Department of Defense also employs approximately 700,000 civilians, disregarding contractors. Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System. The rapid deployment of American forces is facilitated by the Air Force's large fleet of transportation aircraft and aerial refueling tankers, the Navy's fleet of eleven active aircraft carriers, and Marine Expeditionary Units at sea in the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. Outside of the American homeland, the U.S. military is deployed to 770 bases and facilities, on every continent except Antarctica.^[47] Due to the extent of its global military presence, scholars describe the United States as maintaining an "empire of bases."^[48]

U.S. military spending in 2006, over $528 billion, was 46% of the entire military spending in the world and greater than the next fourteen largest national military expenditures combined. (In purchasing power parity terms, it was larger than the next six such expenditures combined.) The per capita spending of $1,756 was approximately ten times the world average.^[49] At 4.06% of GDP, U.S. military spending ranked 27th out of 172 nations.^[50] The official Department of Defense budget in 2006, $419.3 billion, was a 5% increase over 2005.^[51] The estimated total cost to the United States of the war in Iraq through 2016 is $2.267 trillion.^[52] As of October 23, 2007, the United States had suffered 3,834 military fatalities during the war and over 28,100 wounded.^[53]

Economy

Main article: Economy of the United States

Economy of the United States
National economic indicators
Unemployment	4.7% ^{October 2007}^[54]
GDP growth	3.3% ^2005–2006^[3]
CPI inflation	2.8% ^{September 2006–September 2007}^[55]
National debt	$9.111 trillion ^{November 12, 2007}^[56]
Poverty	12.6% or 13.3% ²⁰⁰⁵^[57]^[58]
Monetary value
Exchange rate (per €)	1.4665 ^{November 13, 2007}^[59]
Exchange rate (per £)	2.0911 ^{November 13, 2007}^[59]
Exchange rate (per ¥)	.0090 ^{November 13, 2007}^[59]

The United States has a capitalist mixed economy, which is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity. According to the International Monetary Fund, the United States GDP of more than $13 trillion constitutes over 19% of the gross world product.^[3] The largest national GDP in the world, it was slightly less than the combined GDP of the European Union at purchasing power parity in 2006.^[60] The country ranks eighth in the world in nominal GDP per capita and fourth in GDP per capita at purchasing power parity.^[3] The United States is the largest importer of goods and second largest exporter. Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners.^[61] The leading export commodity is electrical machinery, while vehicles constitute the leading import.^[62] The national debt is the world's largest; in 2005, it was 23% of the global total.^[63] As a percentage of GDP, U.S. debt ranked thirtieth out of 120 countries for which data is available.^[64]

The private sector constitutes the bulk of the economy, with government activity accounting for 12.4% of the GDP.^[65] The economy is postindustrial, with the service sector contributing over 75% of GDP. The leading business field by gross business receipts is wholesale and retail trade; by net income it is finance and insurance.^[66] The United States remains an industrial power, with chemical products the leading manufacturing field.^[67] The United States is the third largest producer of oil in the world, and its largest consumer.^[68] It is the world's number one producer of electrical and nuclear energy, as well as liquid natural gas, aluminum, sulfur, phosphates, and salt. Agriculture accounts for only 1% of GDP but 60% of the world's agricultural production.^[69] The country's leading cash crop is marijuana, despite federal laws making its cultivation and sale illegal.^[70]

Wall Street is home to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)

Three quarters of U.S. business firms have no payroll, but they account for only a small fraction of business receipts. Firms with payrolls of 500 or more employ 49.1% of all paid workers; in 2002, they accounted for 59.1% of business receipts.^[71] The United States ranks third in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index.^[72] Compared to Europe, U.S. property and corporate income taxes are generally higher, while labor and, particularly, consumption taxes are lower.^[73] The New York Stock Exchange is the world's largest by dollar volume; the exchange's parent company, NYSE Euronext, represents over $29 trillion in total market capitalization of listed securities.^[74]

In 2005, 155 million persons were employed with earnings, of whom 80% worked in full-time jobs.^[75] The majority, 79%, were employed in the service sector.^[1] With approximately 15.5 million people, health care and social assistance is the leading field of employment.^[76] About 12% of American workers are unionized, compared to 30% in Western Europe.^[77] The U.S. ranks number one in the ease of hiring and firing workers, according to the World Bank.^[72] Americans tend to work considerably more hours annually than workers in other developed nations, taking fewer and shorter vacations. Between 1973 and 2003, a year's work for the average American grew by 199 hours.^[78] Partly as a result, the United States maintains the highest labor productivity in the world. However, it no longer leads the world in productivity per hour as it did from the 1950s through the early 1990s; workers in Norway, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg are now more productive per hour.^[79] Spending on the social safety net is relatively low: the United States redistributes between 8 and 9% of GDP through social protection programs, slightly under the Japanese rate and less than half the estimated 19% of the European Union.^[80]

Income, human development, and social class

Main articles: Income in the United States, Income inequality in the United States, Poverty in the United States, Affluence in the United States, and Social class in the United States

Income and wealth in the United States
Income and earnings (2005) (change from 2004 in constant dollars) ^[57]
Median income	$46,326 per household (+1.1%)
Per capita income (mean)	$25,036 per capita (+1.5%) ^[81]
Median earnings (age 15+) (working full-time, year-round)	$41,386 per male (-1.8%) $31,858 per female (-1.3%)
Median earnings (age 25+)	$39,336 per worker (FT, YR) ^[82] $32,140 per worker (all workers) ^[83]
Income distribution (2005) (change from 1967 in constant dollars) ^[83]^[5]
Top 5%	$100,000 per individual $166,000 per household (+76.4%)
Top 20%	$52,500 per individual $91,705 per household (+56.4%)
Bottom 20%	$12,500 per individual $19,178 per household (+29.1%)
Gini index	46.9 (1967: 39.7)
Median net wealth (2004) (change from 1995 in constant dollars) ^[84]
Overall	$93,100 per household (+31%)
Top income quartile	$422,400 per household (+97%)
Second income quartile	$124,500 per household (+71%)
Third income quartile	$44,740 per household (0%)
Bottom income quartile	$9,960 per household (+5%)

According to the Census Bureau, the pretax median household income in 2005 was $46,326.^[85] The two-year average ranged from $60,246 in New Jersey to $34,396 in Mississippi.^[86] Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, these income levels are similar to those found in other postindustrial nations. Approximately 13% of Americans were below the federally designated poverty line.^[57]^[58] The number of poor Americans, nearly 37 million, was actually 4 million more than in 2001, the bottom year of the most recent U.S. recession.^[87] The United States was ranked eighth in the world in the UNDP's 2006 Human Development Report.^[88] A 2007 UNICEF study of children's well-being in twenty-one industrialized nations, covering a broad range of factors, ranked the U.S. next to last.^[89]

Between 1967 and 2005, median household income rose 30.6% in constant dollars, largely due to the growing number of dual-earner households. In 2005, median income for nonelderly households declined for the fifth consecutive year.^[87] Though the standard of living has improved for nearly all classes since the late 1970s,^[90] income inequality has grown substantially.^[91]^[92] The share of income received by the top 1% has risen considerably while the share of income of the bottom 90% has fallen, with the gap between the two groups being roughly as large in 2005 as in 1928.^[93] According to the standard Gini index, income inequality in the United States is higher than in any European nation.^[94] Some economists, such as Alan Greenspan, see rising income inequality as a cause for concern.^[95]

While American social classes lack defined boundaries,^[92] sociologists point to social class as a crucial societal variable. Occupation, educational attainment, and income are used as the main indicators of socioeconomic status.^[96] Dennis Gilbert of Hamilton College has proposed a system, adapted by other sociologists,^[97] with six social classes: an upper, or capitalist, class consisting of the wealthy and powerful (1%) , an upper middle class consisting of highly educated professionals (15%) , a middle class consisting of semiprofessionals and craftsmen (33%) , a working class consisting of clerical and blue-collar workers who conduct highly routinized tasks (33%) , and two lower classes—the working poor (13%) and a largely unemployed underclass (12%).^[92] Where it was once common for middle-class households to employ domestic servants, many domestic tasks are now outsourced to the service industry.^[98] Wealth is highly concentrated: The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the country's household wealth, the second-highest share of any democratic developed nation.^[99] The top 1% possesses 33.4% of net wealth, including more than half of the total value in publicly traded stocks.^[100] Though the American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, played a key role in attracting immigrants to the United States, particularly in the late 1800s,^[101] some analysts find that the United States has relatively low social mobility compared to Western Europe and Canada.^[102]

Science and technology

Main articles: Science and technology in the United States and Technological and industrial history of the United States

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin during the first human landing on the Moon, 1969

The United States has been a leader in scientific research and technological innovation since the late nineteenth century. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. The laboratory of Thomas Edison developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera. In the early twentieth century, the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford pioneered assembly line manufacturing. The Wright brothers, in 1903, made what is recognized as the "first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight."^[103] The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led many important European scientists, including Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, to immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the U.S.-based Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. The Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, computers, and many other areas. The United States largely developed the ARPANET and its successor, the internet. Today, the bulk of research and development funding, 64%, comes from the private sector.^[104] The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor.^[105] Americans enjoy high levels of access to technological consumer goods.^[106] Almost half of U.S. households have broadband Internet service.^[107] The country is the primary developer and grower of genetically modified food; more than half of the world's land planted with biotech crops is in the United States.^[108]

Transportation

Main article: Transportation in the United States

Interstate 80, the second-longest U.S. Interstate highway, runs from California to New Jersey

As of 2003, there were 759 automobiles per 1,000 Americans, compared to 472 per 1,000 inhabitants of the European Union the following year.^[109] Approximately 39% of personal vehicles are vans, SUVs, or light trucks.^[110] The average American adult (accounting for all drivers and nondrivers) spends 55 minutes behind the wheel every day, driving 29 miles (47 km).^[111] The U.S. intercity passenger rail system is relatively weak.^[112] Only 9% of total U.S. work trips employ mass transit, compared to 38.8% in Europe.^[113] Bicycle usage is minimal, well below European levels.^[114] The civil airline industry is entirely privatized, while most major airports are publicly owned. The five largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are all American; American Airlines is number one.^[115] Of the world's thirty busiest passenger airports, sixteen are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL).^[116]

Demographics

Main articles: Demography of the United States and Immigration to the United States

Largest ancestry groups by county, 2000

On October 17, 2006, the United States population was estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau to be 300,000,000.^[117] The U.S. population included an estimated 12 million unauthorized migrants,^[118] of whom an estimated 1 million were uncounted by the Census Bureau.^[119] The overall growth rate is 0.89%,^[1] compared to 0.16% in the European Union.^[120] The birth rate of 14.16 per 1,000 is 30% below the world average, while higher than any European country except for Albania and Ireland.^[121] In 2006, 1.27 million immigrants were granted legal residence. Mexico has been the leading source of new U.S. residents for over two decades; since 1998, China, India, and the Philippines have been in the top four sending countries every year.^[122] The United States is the only industrialized nation in which large population increases are projected.^[123]

The United States has a very diverse population—thirty-one ancestry groups have more than a million members.^[124] Whites are the largest racial group, with German Americans, Irish Americans, and English Americans constituting three of the country's four largest ancestry groups.^[124] African Americans, mostly descendants of former slaves, constitute the nation's largest racial minority and third largest ancestry group.^[58]^[124] Asian Americans are the country's second largest racial minority; the two largest Asian American ancestry groups are Chinese and Filipino.^[124] In 2005, the U.S. population included an estimated 4.5 million people with some Native American or Alaskan native ancestry (2.4 million exclusively of such ancestry) and nearly 1 million with some native Hawaiian or Pacific island ancestry (0.4 million exclusively).^[58]^[125]

Race/Ethnicity (2005) ^[58]
White	73.9%
African American	12.4%
Asian	4.4%
Native American and Alaskan Native	0.8%
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander	0.1%
Other/multiracial	8.3%
Hispanic or Latino (of any race)	14.8%

Hispanic American population growth is a major demographic trend. The approximately 44 million Americans of Hispanic descent constitute the largest ethnic minority in the country. About 64% of Hispanic Americans are of Mexican descent.^[126] Between 2000 and 2004, the country's Hispanic population increased 14% while the non-Hispanic population rose just 2%.^[127] Much of this growth is due to immigration: As of 2004, 12% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, over half that number from Latin America.^[128] Fertility is also a factor: The average Hispanic woman gives birth to three children in her lifetime. The comparable fertility rate is 2.2 for non-Hispanic black women and 1.8 for non-Hispanic white women (below the replacement rate of 2.1).^[123] Hispanics accounted for nearly half of the national population growth of 2.9 million between July 2005 and July 2006.^[129] It is estimated on the basis of current trends that by 2050 whites of non-Hispanic origin will be 50.1% of the U.S. population, compared to 69.4% in 2000.^[130] They are currently less than half the population in four "majority-minority states"—California,^[131] New Mexico,^[132] Hawaii,^[133] and Texas^[134]—as well as the District of Columbia.^[135]

About 83% of the population lives in one of the country's 361 metropolitan areas.^[136] In 2005, 254 incorporated places in the United States had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than 1 million residents, and four global cities had over 2 million (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston).^[137] The United States has fifty metropolitan areas with populations greater than 1 million.^[138] Of the fifty fastest-growing metro areas, twenty-three are in the West and twenty-five in the South. Among the country's twenty most populous metro areas, those of Dallas (the fourth largest), Houston (sixth), and Atlanta (ninth) saw the largest numerical gains between 2000 and 2006, while that of Phoenix (thirteenth) grew the largest in percentage terms.^[136]

New York City

Five most populous incorporated places in the United States (2006) ^[137]^[138]
Rank	City	Population within city limits	Metropolitan Area		Region^[139]
Rank	City	Population within city limits	population	rank	Region^[139]
1	New York City	8,214,426	18,818,536	1	Northeast
2	Los Angeles	3,849,378	12,950,129	2	West
3	Chicago	2,833,321	9,505,748	3	Midwest
4	Houston	2,144,491	5,539,949	6	South
5	Phoenix	1,512,986	4,039,182	13	West

Language

Main articles: Languages of the United States and Language Spoken at Home (U.S. Census)

Languages (2003) ^[140]
English (only)	214.8 million
Spanish, incl. Creole	29.7 million
Chinese	2.2 million
French, incl. Creole	1.9 million
Tagalog	1.3 million
Vietnamese	1.1 million
German	1.1 million

Although the United States has no official language at the federal level, English is the national language.

In 2003, about 215 million, or 82% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by over 10% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught foreign language.^[140]^[141] Immigrants seeking naturalization must know English. Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least twenty-eight states.^[142] Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law.^[143] Several insular territories also grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico. While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French.^[144]

Religion

Main articles: Religion in the United States, History of religion in the United States, Freedom of religion in the United States, Separation of church and state in the United States, and List of religious movements that began in the United States

A church in the largely Protestant Bible Belt.

The United States government does not audit Americans' religious beliefs.^[145] In a private survey conducted in 2001, 76.7% of American adults identified themselves as Christian, down from 86.4% in 1990. Protestant denominations accounted for 52%, while Roman Catholics, at 24.5%, were the largest individual denomination.^[146] A different study describes white evangelicals, 26.3% of the population, as the country's largest religious cohort;^[147] evangelicals of all races are estimated at 30–35%.^[148] The total reporting non-Christian religions in 2001 was 3.7%, up from 3.3% in 1990. The leading non-Christian faiths were Judaism (1.4%), Islam (0.5%), Buddhism (0.5%), Hinduism (0.4%), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3%). Between 1990 and 2001, the number of Muslims and Buddhists more than doubled. From 8.2% in 1990, 14.2% in 2001 described themselves as agnostic, atheist, or simply having no religion,^[146] still significantly less than in other postindustrial countries such as Britain (44%) and Sweden (69%).^[149]

Education

Main articles: Education in the United States and Educational attainment in the United States

The University of Virginia, designed by Thomas Jefferson, is one of 19 American UNESCO World Heritage Sites

American public education is operated by state and local governments, regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. Children are obliged in most states to attend school from the age of six or seven (generally, kindergarten or first grade) until they turn eighteen (generally bringing them through 12th grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at sixteen or seventeen.^[150] About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. Just over 2% of children are homeschooled.^[151] The United States has many competitive private and public institutions of higher education, as well as local community colleges of varying quality with open admission policies. Of Americans twenty-five and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees.^[152] The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.^[1]^[153] The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 99.9, tying it with twenty other nations for the top score.^[154]

Health

Main article: Health care in the United States

The American life expectancy of 77.8 years at birth^[155] is a year shorter than the overall figure in Western Europe, and three to four years lower than that of Norway and Switzerland.^[156] Over the past two decades, the country's rank in life expectancy has dropped from 11th to 42nd place in the world.^[157] The infant mortality rate of 6.37 per thousand likewise places the United States 42nd out of 221 countries, behind all of Western Europe.^[158] Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight;^[159] the obesity rate, the highest in the industrialized world, has more than doubled in the last quarter-century.^[160] Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by healthcare professionals.^[161] The U.S. adolescent pregnancy rate, 79.8 per 1,000 women, is nearly four times that of France and five times that of Germany.^[162] Abortion in the United States, legal on demand, is a source of great political controversy. Many states ban public funding of the procedure and have laws to restrict late-term abortions, require parental notification for minors, and mandate a waiting period prior to treatment. While the incidence of abortion is in decline, the U.S. abortion ratio of 241 per 1,000 live births and abortion rate of 15 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 remain higher than those of most Western nations.^[163]

The United States healthcare system far outspends any other nation's, measured in both per capita spending and percentage of GDP.^[164] Unlike most developed countries, the U.S. healthcare system is not fully socialized, instead relying on a mix of public and private funding. In 2004, private insurance paid for 36% of personal health expenditure, private out-of-pocket payments covered 15%, and federal, state, and local governments paid for 44%.^[165] Medical bills are the most common reason for personal bankruptcy in the United States.^[166] In 2005, 46.6 million Americans, or 15.9% of the population, were uninsured, 5.4 million more than in 2001. The primary cause of the decline in coverage is the drop in the number of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance, which fell from 62.6% in 2001 to 59.5% in 2005.^[87] Approximately one third of the uninsured lived in households with annual incomes greater than $50,000, with half of those having an income over $75,000.^[57] Another third were eligible but not registered for public health insurance.^[167] In 2006, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate health insurance;^[168] California is considering similar legislation.^[169]

Crime and punishment

Main articles: Policing in the United States, Law of the United States, Crime in the United States, Prisons in the United States, and Capital punishment in the United States

Homicide rates in selected countries, 2004 (2000 for Russia)

Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police and sheriff's departments, with state police providing broader services. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties. At the federal level and in almost every state, jurisprudence operates on a common law system. State courts conduct most criminal trials; federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as appeals from state systems.

Compared to countries in the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations, the United States has an average overall crime rate.^[170] Among developed nations, it has above-average levels of violent crime and particularly high levels of gun violence and homicide.^[171] In 2005, there were 5.6 murders per 100,000 persons, compared to 1.0 in Germany^[172] and 1.9 in Canada.^[173] The U.S. homicide rate, which decreased by 36% between 1986 and 2000, has been roughly steady since.^[174] Some scholars have associated the high rate of homicide with the country's high rates of gun ownership, in turn associated with U.S. gun laws which are very permissive compared to those of other developed countries.^[175]

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate^[176] and total prison population^[177] in the world and by far the highest figures among democratic, developed nations: in 2006, 750 out of every 100,000 Americans were jailed during the year, more than three times the figure in Poland, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country with the next highest rate.^[178] The current U.S. rate is almost five-and-a-half times the 1980 figure of 139 per 100,000.^[179] African American males are jailed at over six times the rate of white males and three times the rate of Hispanic males.^[176] The country's extraordinary rate of incarceration is largely due to changes in sentencing and drug policies.^[176]^[180] Though it has been abolished in most Western nations, capital punishment is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and in thirty-eight states. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, there have been over 1,000 executions in the United States.^[181] In 2006, the country had the sixth highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, and Sudan.^[182]

Culture

Main article: Culture of the United States

The United States is a culturally diverse nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values.^[6]^[96] The culture held in common by the majority of Americans is referred to as "mainstream American culture," a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European migrants, beginning with the early English and Dutch settlers. German, Irish, and Scottish cultures have also been very influential.^[6] Certain Native American traditions and many cultural characteristics of enslaved West Africans were absorbed into the American mainstream.^[183] Westward expansion brought close contact with the culture of Mexico, and large-scale immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced many new cultural elements. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has had broad impact. The resulting mix of cultures may be characterized as a homogeneous melting pot or as a pluralistic salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.^[6]

While American culture maintains that the United States is a classless society,^[184] economists and sociologists have identified cultural differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values.^[185] The American middle and professional class has been the source of many contemporary social trends such as feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism.^[186] Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree.^[187] While Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute.^[188] Women, formerly limited to domestic roles, now mostly work outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees.^[189] The changing role of women has also changed the American family. In 2005, no household arrangement defined more than 30% of households; married childless couples were most common, at 28%.^[97] The extension of marital rights to homosexual persons is an issue of debate, with more liberal states permitting civil unions and Massachusetts recently having legalized same-sex marriage.^[190]

Popular media

Main articles: Cinema of the United States, Television in the United States, and Music of the United States

The iconic Hollywood sign

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The next year saw the first commercial screening of a projected film, also in New York, and the United States was in the forefront of sound film's development in the following decades. Since the early twentieth century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, California. Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of film grammar and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time.^[191] American screen actors like John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe have become iconic figures, while producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies in the world, such as Star Wars (1977) and Titanic (1997) , and the products of Hollywood today dominate the global film industry.^[192]

Americans are the heaviest television viewers in the world,^[193] and the average time spent in front of the screen continues to rise, hitting five hours a day in 2006.^[194] The four major broadcast networks are all commercial entities. Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercialized, on average just over two-and-a-half hours a day.^[195] Aside from web portals and search engines, the most popular websites are eBay, MySpace, Amazon.com, The New York Times, and Apple.^[196] Twelve million Americans keep a blog.^[197]

The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is now known as old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the twentieth century. Country music, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll emerged between the 1920s and 1950s. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of America's greatest songwriters and James Brown led the development of funk. More recent American creations include disco and hip hop. American pop stars such as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities.

Literature, philosophy, and the arts

Main articles: American literature, Visual arts of the United States, Theater in the United States, and American classical music

Mount Rushmore, a massive sculpture of four prominent American presidents

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the nineteenth century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, would be recognized as America's other essential poet. Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. Ernest Hemingway, the 1954 Nobel laureate, is often named as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.^[198] A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel." Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction developed in the United States.

The transcendentalists, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau, established the first major American philosophical movement. After the Civil War, Charles Peirce and then William James and John Dewey were leaders in the development of pragmatism. In the twentieth century, the work of W.V.O. Quine and Richard Rorty helped bring analytic philosophy to the fore in U.S. academics.

In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was an important mid-nineteenth-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene.^[199] Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new styles, displaying a highly individualistic sensibility. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein have developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has also brought American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry to the top of their field.

One of the first notable promoters of the nascent American theater was impresario P. T. Barnum, who began operating a lower Manhattan entertainment complex in 1841. The team of Harrigan and Hart produced a series of popular musical comedies in New York starting in the late 1870s. In the twentieth century, the modern musical form emerged on Broadway; the songs of musical theater composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim have become pop standards. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel literature prize in 1936; other acclaimed U.S. dramatists include multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and August Wilson.

Though largely overlooked at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major U.S. composer in the classical tradition; other experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created an identifiably American approach to classical composition. Aaron Copland and George Gershwin developed a unique American synthesis of popular and classical music. Choreographers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham were central figures in the creation of modern dance; George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins were leaders in twentieth-century ballet. The United States has long been at the fore in the relatively modern artistic medium of photography, with major practitioners such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams, and many others. The newspaper comic strip and the comic book are both U.S. innovations. Superman, the quintessential comic book superhero, has become an American icon.

Food and clothing

American cultural icons: apple pie, baseball, and the American flag

Mainstream American culinary arts are similar to those in other Western countries. Wheat is the primary cereal grain. Traditional American cuisine uses ingredients such as turkey, white-tailed deer venison, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup, indigenous foods employed by Native Americans and early European settlers. Slow-cooked pork and beef barbecue, crab cakes, potato chips, and chocolate chip cookies are distinctively American styles. Soul food, developed by African slaves, is popular around the South and among many African Americans elsewhere. Syncretic cuisines such as Louisiana creole, Cajun, and Tex-Mex are regionally important. Fried chicken, which combines Scottish and African American culinary traditions, is a national favorite. Iconic American dishes such as apple pie, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various European immigrants. So-called French fries, Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos, and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed.^[200] During the last two decades of the twentieth century, Americans' daily caloric intake rose 24%,^[200] as the share from food consumed outside the home went from 18 to 32%.^[201] Frequent dining at fast food outlets such as McDonald's is closely associated with what government researchers call the American "obesity epidemic."^[202]^[201] The popularity of well-promoted diets such as the Atkins Nutritional Approach has sent sales of "carb-conscious" processed food soaring.^[203]

Americans generally prefer coffee to tea, with more than half the adult population drinking at least one cup a day.^[204] American liquors include bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, applejack, and Puerto Rican rum. The martini is the characteristic American cocktail.^[205] The average American consumes 81.6 liters of beer per year.^[206] American-style lagers, typified by the leading Budweiser brand, are light in body and flavor; Budweiser owner Anheuser-Busch controls 50% of the national beer market.^[207] In recent decades, wine production and consumption has increased substantially, with winemaking now a leading industry in California. In contrast to European traditions, wine is often drunk before meals, substituting for cocktails.^[208] Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk (now often fat-reduced) ubiquitous breakfast beverages.^[209]^[203] Highly sweetened soft drinks are widely popular; sugared beverages account for 9% of the average American's daily caloric intake, more than double the rate three decades ago.^[202] Leading soft-drink producer Coca-Cola is the most recognized brand in the world, just ahead of McDonald's.^[210]

Apart from professional business attire, U.S. fashions are eclectic and predominantly informal. While Americans' diverse cultural roots are reflected in their clothing, particularly those of recent immigrants, cowboy hats and boots and leather motorcycle jackets are emblematic of specifically American styles. Blue jeans were popularized as work clothes in the 1850s by merchant Levi Strauss, a German immigrant in San Francisco, and adopted by many American teenagers a century later. They are now widely worn on every continent by people of all ages and social classes. Along with mass-marketed informal wear in general, blue jeans are arguably U.S. culture's primary contribution to global fashion.^[211] The country is also home to the headquarters of many leading designer labels such as Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. Labels such as Abercrombie & Fitch and Eckō cater to various niche markets.

Sports

Main article: Sports in the United States

The Pro Bowl (2006), American football's annual all-star game

Since the late nineteenth century, baseball has been regarded as the national sport; football, basketball, and ice hockey are the country's three other leading professional team sports. College football and basketball also attract large audiences. Football is now by several measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States.^[212] Boxing and horse racing were once the most watched individual sports, but they have been eclipsed by golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR. Soccer, though not a leading professional sport in the country, is played widely at the youth and amateur levels. Tennis and many outdoor sports are also popular.

While most major U.S. sports have evolved out of European practices, basketball was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the regionally popular lacrosse was a precolonial Native American sport. At the individual level, skateboarding and snowboarding are twentieth-century U.S. inventions, related to surfing, a Hawaiian practice predating Western contact. Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States, four summer and four winter. The United States has won 2,191 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country,^[213] and 216 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most.^[214] Several American athletes have become world famous, in particular baseball player Babe Ruth, boxer Muhammad Ali, basketball player Michael Jordan, and golfer Tiger Woods.

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